Tuesday, January 23, 2007

This letter was recieved by email. I decided to just leave all the funny type-o doo-dads in there. I think that the meaning is clear.

FOOD NOT BOMBS

December 6, 2006

Dear Arcata Co-Op,

The North Coast Co-Op, Arcata Store, is one of several sources from which Food Not Bombs (FNB) gleans food. FNB is an effort to feed anyone who is hungry in an open, respectful way. Many FNB volunteers are committed to non-violent social change through the celebration and nurturing of life by preparing and giving out free vegetarian or vegan food â€“some volunteers help out on occasion, as a way of being part of a compassionate community, meeting a concrete need, and â€œgiving back.â€

Locally and elsewhere, Food Not Bombs has a long tradition of conscious and sanitary food preparation and service. Volunteers are well-known for prioritizing dignity in their food sharing and diligent standards of cleanliness. Arcata FNB has been continuously serving at least once a week for over four years with out any complaints of food poisoning. FNB volunteers spend many hours preparing, cleaning, transporting, serving and eating each free community meal.

Food Not Bombs is a loose-knit group of independent collectives all over the world, most concentrated in North America. FNB ideology maintains that myriad corporate and government priorities allow hunger to persist in the midst of abundance. While there is enough food in the world to feed everyone (likewise in Arcata), so much food goes to waste intentionally and/or needlessly as a direct result of capitalism and militarism. FNB tries to call attention to poverty and homelessness, the results of these oppressive, violent systems, by sharing food in public places and facilitating the gathering of poor, homeless, and other disenfranchised people. Most of the food served by FNB is healthy surplus food that would otherwise go to waste as well generous donations from individuals in the community. FNB invites people who eat FNB meals to be involved in providing the food themselves. Food Not Bombs does not make people jump through bureaucratic hoops or punish anyone for being poor, but rather fosters empowerment and self-determination.

Food Not Bombs in Arcata has an her/history that includes subjection to police repression, arrests for serving free food on the Plaza, and success in overcoming prohibitive city action, through persistent dedication to feeding hungry people. Vincent of the Arcata Co-Op requested a letter from Food Not Bombs and has articulated 3 conditions upon which FNB volunteers can again receive Co-Op â€˜throw-awayâ€™ food and, in turn, feed many people.

The 3 conditions are purported to be in response to the Co-Opâ€™s claims that it received a complaint-- that produce was found on the Plaza. Apparently, the presumption is that 1) the produce was donated by the Co-Op to FNB, and 2) FNB is somehow responsible.

The 3 conditions that Vincent has â€˜mandatedâ€™ (apparently on behalf of the Co-Op) in order for FNB to receive donations again are:

1) that three people, regular FNB pick-up volunteers, present their IDâ€™s and confirm that they will be the sole designated receivers of Co-Op donations;

2) that any food be picked up on the Plaza after FNB meals, and;

3) that the donated food be cooked in a â€˜certified-to-codeâ€™ kitchen.

As community members and as volunteers committed to service and sharing, we hope that the Co-Op will defend against the systematic violence of poverty and acknowledge the presence in our local communities of poor individuals and families, and respect their needs.

Here are our responses to the 3 requests:

1) Because we understand and respect your need to be familiar with people who are picking up food donations, we will designate 3 consistent FNB volunteers to do pick-ups, and we will make sure that you are introduced to any â€˜newâ€™ people who may, in the future, replace one of the â€œthreeâ€ taking on the task of pick-ups.

2) Rest assured that we will see to it that food and garbage resulting from our FNB community meals will be picked up from the Plaza and at any other serving sites to the best of our ability before leaving the site of our FNB event.

3) Regarding the request that we prepare our community meals in a â€˜certifiedâ€™ kitchen, we find this request unreasonable. The method of food preparation for our events is our concern. Our food preparation is adequate and appropriate and always has been. Moreover, our food preparation is neither legally nor otherwise relevant to the Co-Op or to its expressed concern(s).

We are hopeful that donations of food from the Co-Op will immediately resume, as homeless folks are at this time especially in need of healthy, cooked meals. For some, such meals are critical to their very survival.

If you believe that further negotiations are required with Food Not Bombs, we request that you not withhold food donations during that process. The Endeavor has cut back services during the most severe weather time of year, now more than ever FNB is needed for the survival and dignity of hungry people in Arcata.

Sincerely,

the Local Food Not Bombs Community

[Then there was a written note that said something like (but more eloquent): â€œIf someone requests food for Food Not Bombs who has not been previously designated to do pick-ups, please ask her/him to call 822-4014 so that we can coordinate.â€-- This was added to assuage that horrendous worry that different people may request food to make free meals.]

At the first of what organizers say will now be weekly Saturday rallies in front of the LAPD’s Central Division headquarters, a Skid Row rally on Saturday, organized by a homeless man, saw the largest public turnout yet for a public demand to end L.A’s massive new push to criminalize all this city’s homeless people.

Activists are calling on the community to help set up a base-camp on Skid Row to halt, immediately now, the police attacks.

Since last August, Los Angeles police have been the staging, on Skid Row, the largest attacks on homeless people in the city’s history; daily waves of police arrests, beatings and harassment that has terrorized all homeless people here: with up to 4,000 homeless people targeted.

And with, up until now, almost no widespread Los Angeles city outcry.

At this first of weekly rallies were activists from Food Not Bombs, the People’s College of Law, CopWatch Los Angeles, the Downtown Unitarian Universalists, and the Skid Row-based Catholic Worker community. Activists say they are now planning this week to establish a base camp on Skid Row --to intensify the community watch, and to assist homeless people here; and also other groups; in documenting the daily police attacks, as well as to support the upcoming weekly Saturday rallies.

About 1,000 homeless people are holding out on Skid Row sidewalks now nightly –with another 3,000 throughout the L.A. area who are estimated to spend at least one night, every three months, living on Skid Row.

“It is critical that from here on out no cop anywhere in this city get away with telling a homeless person anymore that they are a criminal because they refuse to go to a shelter. Don’t they get it? A Federal Court has ordered --as long as L.A., countywide, has over 80,000 homeless people and less than 30,000 shelterbeds you cannot humanely forbid anyone in here from sleeping wherever. This city has the worst housing crisis in the nation; but L.A. is now trying to enforce a new policy --‘shelter or criminalization.’ These attacks on homeless people are something that must end now; and the people of LA need to know that since last August, under our new, so-called “progressive” mayor, Antonio Villariagosa, homeless people are now being beaten, arrested, and criminalized --like has been done by no other mayor in Los Angeles’ history." stated the homeless organizer of the protest, David Busch.

"Not even a Republican politician would have even dared attack us like this –and it is disgusting. Housing, not shelter, is a human right for all; and this trying to force us into accepting prison-like “shelters,” under threat of jail, or criminalization, must stop --now,” further stated Busch.

Busch is homeless, and living on Skid Row, and has been attacked by cops there twice since August. He has been homeless for over 13 years.

Activist say the waves of arrests and property seizures and beatings are coinciding with homeless being shipped by threat of force out of downtown; and away from many of the government offices and services they need –all in order to evacuate the poor from L.A.’s center for new loft and other pro-business developments downtown.

LAPD Chief William Bratton, in the past, has linked the current sweeps as part of his “Broken Windows” policing policy for L.A..

Coinciding with the Saturday rally --the Los Angeles Coalition to End Hunger and Homelessness, a large city anti-poverty group –also though, on Thursday, issued a press release to every newspaper, radio and television station in Southern California, as well as to all major national news media, denouncing the sweeps; and demanding a full accounting from LAPD for every homeless person harassed by a cop since August.

Eighty-percent of skid row is African American –and the largest percentage of the homeless on Skid Row, almost 10,000, are people forced to live in tiny one room hotels where they have had to pass constant drug screenings and cops have master keys, and where cops have been mounting unprecedented attacks on parolees also residing here to force them from the area. Meanwhile, this week, the Los Angeles City Council is also set to give continuing major green lights to a new, billion-dollar downtown mega-development, the “Grand Avenue Project”: and, along with the city ok, over 50 million dollars in taxpayer subsidies for the project.

City Councilwoman for Skid Row, Jan Perry supports the Grand Avenue project –but is offering nothing comparable to help even those homeless on Skid Row who’ve scraped themselves up off the sidewalks, and clawed their way into these tiny hotel rooms.

Homeless activists are calling for the community to show up en-mass for next Saturday’s rally, and to also pack tomorrow, Tuesday’s 9:30 a.m. Police Commission hearing at Parker Center; and to demand an end to all the attacks on the Skid Row community –as well as every Council meeting this week --and to also demand an immediate halt to the Grand Avenue Project, no matter what it takes, until community demands for equity for poor people downtown and throughout Los Angeles for the poor are meet by the developer consortium, and the L.A. City Council.

Since last August, Skid Row's homeless people have undergone the largest mass arrests of homeless people in L.A. history; hundreds of homeless people each month now have faced multiple daily raids of police demanding warrant checks, searches and property confiscation --as waves of 50 new LAPD officers brought to the area have swept through for daily beatings and arrests of homeless people --in order to now clear downtown for the newest wave of luxury loft developers. The Los Angeles Coalition to End Hunger and Homelessness estimates as many as 4,000 poor and homeless people may have had police demand their ID; handcuffed them; searched through every bag, suitcase, and possession they have --and then been transported to the LAPD booking room; and cuffed to a bench for up to an hour or more before being given a "choice:"

get into a "shelter" --or go to jail.

A Federal Court recently found almost 90,000 homeless people in Los Angeles County --and less than 30,000 shelter beds.

Incredibly, Central Division is getting away with now not classify these Skid Row actions as "arrests" --Division Captain Andrew Smith even recently claims that arrests on Skid Row "declined" this year. (citing only about an additional 2,000 "official arrests").

Nor do these figures include recent pre-dawn raids --where sleeping residents are woke up and are told, now, since the first of the year, to "leave in 20 minutes" or be arrested.

Additionally, since the first of the year, Skid Row Police are systematically clearing now entire streets in pre-dawn raids: Los Angeles, San Pedro, 5th St. and Crocker St. --and herding people towards the L.A. river --demanding that thousands of homeless people maintain themselves now in the fifty blocks of Skid Row for up to 2&1/2 hours each day without any public water source; only one public toilet that's not in a religious mission; and not a single public place to lie down, or even sit, until 8:30 a.m..; when only two tiny parks, with barely enough rain cover for 50 people, are supposed to serve a street population of up to 4,000 at any given time.

A homeless person on Skid Row was mocked last week by one LAPD policeman, "By the end of this month all this will be gone" --referring to the thousands of homeless people here who are breaking no law, and yet are facing daily, unprecedented, cop harassment. LA City Council insiders are even warning activists that such raids are being now contemplated soon for Hollywood, Venice, the Valley, and South L.A..

Stated Robert Erlinbusch, Director of the anti-poverty advocacy group, The Los Angeles Coalition to End Hunger and Homelessness:

"There are also many reasons why people will refuse to go to shelters; firstly, they are almost always full --making them impossible for many to get into -and, additionally, shelters separate unmarried partners; they often refuse to accommodate people's dogs or other pets; or provide adequate storage and transport of possessions; they do not accommodate mothers with children of certain ages; and they are often places extreme, and unlawful, hostility to anyone of the LGBT community."

A Federal Court order currently forbids LAPD from arresting anyone for merely sleeping on the sidewalk in the Skid Row area between 9 p.m. at night, and 6 a. m. each morning.

People are urged to bring signs, banners, and self-standing tents with footprints no larger than 8'x8'; solar panels; water; legal internet relay antennas; healthy vegetarian food and --respect for ALL residents here --for the rally, and to support the growing community resistance.

Monday, January 22, 2007

"Homeless" Tent Encampment in Olympia Feb 1

http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2007/01/352625.shtml

On February 1, the "Poor" Peoples Union of Olympia, WA will set up a "homeless" tent encampment in response to a new city ordinance which goes into effect on February 1, making it virtually illegal to be on the street ("homeless") in Olympia. The exact location will not be revealed until the last minute, however it will be a highly visible protest. The eventual goals are to find a permanant location where the people can have a long term, autonomously run encampment and locations where people can be housed in autonomous, democraticly run communities.

The Poor People's Union, since its inception, has sought to overturn the ordinances targeted at the "homeless". Our intitial idea was to have a referendum on the ordinance and gather enough signatures for it. Over the past weeks, however, it has become clear that the PPU will not be able to expediently stop the ordinances from going into effect and has decided to put a referendum off for the time being.

Instead, the PPU is channeling all of its energy into setting up a tentencampment in order to not only show the Olympia community what is going on but to occupy a piece of land in order to satisfy a need that those who passed these laws take for granted: housing. The people who passed and support this ordinance can hear about the "homeless problem" on TV, can complain about the "danger" of Downtown Olympia, and can be so arrogant and disrespectful as to pass laws that will effect other living human beings, but they will not get away with this without it coming back to emberass them.

The encampent will consist of human beings helping other human beings to live more comfortably than they have been. It will be run by those who have set it up. Decisions will be made by those who have a large stake in insuring the continuance of the encampment. Governments and laws try and convince us that we cannot do the simplest things, such as use vacant "city" land to house people with no roof over their heads. The encampment is one of those simple things and we do not require government approval to take matters out of their inept hands and put them into our own. They will probably attempt to crush us with the help of the police but we will not stop what we are doing. If the police do ANYTHING against us (the "homeless", the poor) it will only inflame the situation and provide more proof that they serve as nothing more than lackeys of those with exceedingly large roofs over their heads. For why would another human being want to deny another a comfortable place to live? Some will say law and some will say order, but no word or words will justify what is being done to the "homeless" in this town.

PPU (Poor Peoples Union) is an organization of Street People ("Homeless") and their friends. PPU is a autonomous, democratic organization where the unhoused have the final say on matters that effect them directly.

On Sunday, December 10th of last year, the environment editorof U.K.'s Independent Online posted a report from the UnitedNations Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO), asserting that"the world's top destroyer of the environment is not the car,or the plane, or even George Bush: it is the cow". According to the report, the world's rapidly growing herds ofcattle have been identified as the greatest threat to the climate,forestsand wildlife. And they have been blamed for a host of otherenvironmentalcrimes, from acid rain to the introduction ofalien species, from producing deserts to creating dead zones inthe oceans,from poisoning rivers and drinking water to destroyingcoral reefs. The 400-page report by the FAO, entitled "Livestock's LongShadow",also surveys the damage done by sheep, chickens, pigsand goats. But in almost every case, the world's 1.5 billioncattle are most to blame. Livestock are responsible for 18 percentof the greenhouse gases that cause global warming, more than cars,planes and all other forms of transport put together. Burning fuel to produce fertilizer to grow feed, to producemeat,and to transport it--and clearing vegetation for grazing--produces 9 percent of all emissions of carbon dioxide, the mostcommon greenhouse gas. And their wind and manure emit more thanone-third of emissions of another, methane, which warms the world20 times faster than carbon dioxide. Livestock also produces more than 100 other polluting gases,including more than two-thirds of the world's emissions of ammonia,one of the main causes of acid rain. Ranching, the report adds, is "the major driver of deforestation"worldwide, and overgrazing is turning a fifth of all pastures andranges into desert. Cows soak up vast amounts of water: it takes astaggering 990 litres of water to produce one litre of milk. Wastes from feedlots and fertilizers used to grow their feedovernourish water, causing weeds to choke out all other life. Andthe pesticides, antibiotics and hormones used to treat them get intodrinking water and endanger human health. The pollution washes down to the sea, killing coral reefs andcreating "dead zones" devoid of life. One is up to 21,000 sq. km.,in the Gulf of Mexico, where much of the waste from U.S. beefproduction is carried down the Mississippi. The report concludes that, unless drastic changes are made,the massive damage done by livestock will more than double by 2050,as demand for meat increases. That's the bad news. The good news is that reducing ourconsumption of food derived from animals happens one meal ata time and that it is well within the power of each of us tomake changes, however incremental, in our food choices! I'm a firm believer that one can stay low on the food chainand still enjoy life. As a mostly vegan vegetarian, I know I amlooking out for my health and the health of the animals I choosenot to eat. And now,as it turns out, I'm saving the planet as well!(And what about not wanting to eat the products of cloned orgenetically engineered animals? Another reason to go vegan!) So get a grip on global warming by resolving to lessen yourdependence on animals for food in 2007. Martha Devine

Friday, January 19, 2007

I guess I'm just spitting into the wind again, but the “special” treatment plan for the homeless (the Arcata Emergency Housing and Services Plan) once again is before the grant-whoring Arcata City Council again Wednesday night. Again I expect the public to ignore this issue. After all, surely they will stop their extremely obtrusive control paradigm with the homeless (damn, and to think we give too little credit for the Nazi propaganda, the eugenics mental hygiene and the supremest domestic law enforcement machines we transferred to the U. S. after WWII during “operation paperclip”). They would never view you or me as useless and crazy enough not to recognize it.

These homeless are the least of our brethren – worthless in the eyes of our spirit and earth. They're bums, crazy as hell for not having a two SUVs and garages to put them in. They want to live like they deserve to live. We all have read the Times Slanderer, the Eureka Distorter, the Arcata Lie and the North Coast Urinal, so we all know that all our problems are the result of these “transients.” Global Warming is not a myth it is the direct result of letting the homeless into our towns! Excessive trash production would go away without all the card board and Styrofoam these useless feeders obtain when they consume their newer, bigger, better, more expensive crap bought with handout money. We could eliminate landfills if wasn't for these parasites. The Homeless require cops, which requires militarization of our police forces, which require lots of people to be killed, which is by definition a war, which escalates and causes other wars, which means all the evils ever done in the world is the fault homeless person's (ever hear “look what you made me do to you”).

No autonomy for the homeless! No liberty for the homeless! No land for the homeless! No freedom for the homeless! Just mental health/eugenics drugs for the homeless! Just cop beatings and killings for the homeless! Just prisons and jails for the homeless! And plenty of lucre for the poverty pimps and the grant whores!

Rest well knowing you ignored the issue and, like our green hero's, agreed with Bush's Chronic Homeless Initiative. Ignore the plight of these lessers and the silly issues they raise as to equality and egalitarianism will go away . . . completely!

Tuesday, January 09, 2007

In her December 31, 2006 Times-Standard “My Word” column titled “Being All You Can Be, We Need The Best In Our Military”, Kris Morrisey wrote the following: “I am ashamed of the behavior of those who would lessen their commitment and sacrifice…. I am frustrated by the continuing denigration of our armed forces. Disagree with our president; debate about foreign policy; don’t put a yellow ‘Support Our Troops’ ribbon on your car; but stop besmirching the reputation of our military men and women….”

If anyone should be ashamed of themselves (other than the shortsighted political “leaders” who supported this inane, greed-based fiasco), it is Kris Morrisey! How typically dishonest and deceitful for a partisan Republican like Morrisey to label the opponents of Bush & Cheney’s unnecessary quagmire in Iraq as opponents of the U.S. military. Morrisey’s anemic assertions simply could not be further from the truth.

Did you miss the news about numerous, recently-retired American generals speaking out against the current counterproductive policy and those incompetent neo-cons (like Donald Rumsfeld) for leading the United States down this demented, disastrous foreign policy path in the Middle East?

An overwhelming majority of Americans now demand that our military men and women be withdrawn ASAP from Bush & Cheney’s illegal war for oil and imperial expansion. Why? Because we actually do support our troops, unlike those Republican war criminals in The White House who have willfully murdered thousands of patriotic Americans (along with hundreds-of-thousands of Iraqi civilians) in an effort to make themselves and their business partners-in-crime even more filthy rich than they already are.

And, oh….by the way, where is that most infamous Bush family business partner of all = Osama bin Laden? Did you “smoke him out” yet, Mr. Bush, Junior? Or, have you not personally profited enough from your debacle to date?

Hey, who needs universal health insurance or a cleaner environment? So long as lying, cowardly racist oil men from Texas get what they want!

Poor Kris Morrisey has apparently been “functioning” with her head-in-the-sand these past few years (or solely relying on FOX “News” and the Republican Arkley-owned Eureka Reporter for her disinformation).

Did you miss the news from our intelligence agencies (all of them) contradicting Bush & Cheney’s propaganda campaign falsely portraying Iraq as an imminent threat to U.S. national security? Where are those nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, Mr. “President”?

Did you miss the news from our intelligence community that neither Saddam Hussein nor his regime had any role in the 9/11 attacks, whatsoever?

Did you also miss out on reading the Project For The American Century’s Hitlerian manifesto titled “Rebuilding America ’s Defenses” from September 2000? The entire Bush/Cheney imperial agenda is laid bare in print for all to see in this single document, which you can download online (for free) at www.raytal.com.

Being a faithful fan of Bush & Cheney’s immoral, bloodthirsty misadventure, Kris Morrisey also made this statement (shockingly, without any apparent sign of irony): “We live in a country where too many people believe that serving in the military is for someone else to do. It’s someone else’s duty. Not my child. I highly recommend ‘AWOL: The Unexcused Absence of America ’s Upper Classes from Military Service – and How It Hurts Our Country.”

Did the irony-deficient Morrisey miss the news about George Bush, Junior being Absent Without Leave (AWOL) from the Alabama National Guard for a period of 18 months during war time in 1972-73?

Did you also miss the news about Dick “Chickenhawk” Cheney asking for - and receiving - a total of FIVE deferments from military service during the Vietnam War, another wholly unjustified slaughter which both Bush & Cheney claim to have “supported?”

Maybe one day these naïve, hypocritical Republican warmongers will finally learn to take this wisdom to heart: People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. Especially if your last name is Bush.

End this unforgiveable, murderous occupation, Mr. Bush! Bring our friends and family home from this bloodbath – NOW! We are done asking nicely, and we will force your hand, if necessary. Either leave Iraq , or leave office – your choice. Your time is up.